Hi Beverly,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and self-direction.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was .
You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and verbal.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to developing healthier habits .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Wake up at 8:30am everyday .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Contribute to my wellbeing .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Sleeping too late the night before .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I brush my teeth, I will go to bed. .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Sports .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Anxious and motivated when receiving critical feedback, and Anxious and motivated when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being exams .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Health .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .
In one word, you said it made you feel Grateful .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
![]()
Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Grit is about working a little everyday not working hard everyday |
| You can't force an interest sometimes, some things just aren't for me |
| Think about your career now and where you want to be in the future and how they might align |
| Don't quit on a bad day |
| Break up big goals into smaller, more digestible goals and link it to your why |
| Ask for advice not feedback |
| Notice your feelings, sit with them, and put things into perspective |
| Don't rely on willpower to develop a habit; change your situation! |
| The next time you receive feedback imagine a post it note that says they have high expectations |
| Be a giver as much as possible |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Hannah Moskowitz |
| Beverly is a wonderful teammate because she is attentive, always carefully listening and relating your experiences to her own. Beverly always pushes to conversation further, asking increasingly reflective questions. I admire how much she seems to value and invest in having mentors including formers peers a few years a head or much older mentors that help advise her path forward.
Beverly's discovery project was so complementary towards her natural tendency to value mindfulness. Based on our many team conversations, it is clear how much Beverly values awareness and reflection and meditation seemed to be an extension of that. I also appreciated that she had us do a meditation exercise. It was clear she wanted to share a little piece of her experience with a larger community. |
| Valeria Celi Damis |
| Beverly, you are such a considerate, positive, and kind person. Your incredibly thoughtful listening skills and genuine care for others truly stand out. I appreciate your relaxed and thoughtful attitude; talking to you is always enjoyable during class. In our group discussions, you consistently add something interesting by sharing your own personal experiences. The way you strike a balance between a calm perspective yet still being incredibly passionate and determined is admirable. Keep being the amazing person you are, Beverly! Your presence and contributions make a significant positive impact on our learning environment.
I really enjoyed your presentation on mindfulness and the personal experiences that you shared along with it. I found particularly impactful the relationship that you created with your Discovery Project BFF and how they helped support your experience even if they didn’t fill the role of a professional or experienced mentor. I also really appreciated your message of encouragement and being patient with ourselves. Acknowledging that we won’t immediately engage with meditation is really valuable with something that requires so much focus, but it is also applicable to any skill. Lastly, I think you did a really great job of engaging the audience to the purpose of your project by motivating us to try meditation ourselves in the moment, and why that was something you were interested in exploring. I hope you continue this practice!!!!
|
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.